


H.G.'s Magical Adventure Through Music

by anamatics



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Americana, F/F, Inspired by Music, Original Character(s), World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They sent her away with the astrolabe, a gun with fifteen bullets, and a music player that was a hold-over from a better time.  Helena traverses the American countryside and discovers the music of the times she's missed - and a good deal about herself and the people of the world she once tried to destroy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	H.G.'s Magical Adventure Through Music

Among her personal effects, unceremoniously dumped into her arms by a less-than-amused-looking Mr. Kosan is a small music player.  Claudia had called it an eye-pod when she’d shoved it into Helena’s hands not long before their first mission together.  “For the plane trip,” she had advised, tapping the small cord that was wrapped around the little yellow device.  “You’ll thank me later.”  Helena picks it up now, staring at its yellow metal case and twisted earphone cord.  The music has taken her to places that she’d never expected before. 

When she was a child, she’d grown used to having to travel to hear music.  Helena remembered standing on street corners listening to fiddlers and the dirty saloons that Charles had dragged her into.  He had been a great lover of music, obsessed with Edison’s phonograph when news of his patent had first hit the papers when Helena was still but a child.  She’d spent many hours crammed into the back rooms of gentlemen’s clubs, her breasts bound and her clothing belonging to Charles’ valet, just listening.

When she was thirteen, Charles had taken her to see _H.M.S Pinafore,_ and Helena had fallen in love with the opera.  She’d gone to see the _Mikado_ when they’d sailed to New York before continuing on to Chicago for the World’s Fair. 

“I was not aware you favored modern music,” Mr. Kosan says quietly, handing her a Walther PPK and a box of .38 caliber bullets. Helena balks at the small handgun in her hand, she’s always liked that the Warehouse favored the Tesla because it caused very little permanent damage.  She’s never been much for guns.  She checks to make sure that the clip is loaded before sliding it back into place.  Helena flips the safety on and tucks the pistol into the back of her pants.  The bullets are tossed into the duffle next to the damned astrolabe that’s started this mess. 

Helena gives him a wan smile.  “I don’t,” she lies (because some of the music that Claudia loaded onto her little music player she actually had grown quite fond of before they’d taken her memories away and suck her in Wyoming for safekeeping.  “It has a radio feature which will prove handy.”

Mr. Kosan nods at this and passes her two passports.  “Both of these are new, aliases that have been created outside of the Warehouse network.  Mr. Neilson and anyone else who may be looking for you will have no way of tracking them so long as you chose to remain anonymous.”

The expression on her face changes from calm to grim, her mouth tipping downwards into a frown.  She jams the music player into her pocket and picks up her watch.  Flipping it open, she checks the time: eleven fifty three, Grand Meridian time minus six hours.  “I don’t suppose I’ll see you again,” she says to Mr. Kosan.  Her hand moves quickly, zipping her bag shut and slinging it over her shoulder.  “You’ve been most helpful.”

/|\

Helena ends up in New York City.  She supposes that it was only a matter of time until the mecca of this city drew her back.  She wears all black and stays in a tiny rented room owned by an old Jewish woman names Mrs. Ethel Switz, who is far too nosy but generally a good conversationalist.  She thinks that Helena is a graduate student at New York University, and Helena doesn’t have the heart to correct her and point out that she’s technically too old for university.  She supposes that in a world where people are constantly reinventing themselves, she could be such an individual.  She even takes to carrying around some thicker books as she researches the astrolabe further. 

One night, when she’s been reading all day and Mrs. Switz has offered her a glass of sherry, Helena takes the time to peruse Mrs. Switz’s record collection.  “Do you have a phonograph?” she asks her landlord.  She’s found a promising looking album and feels like testing out some more modern music.  The gentleman on the cover has glasses and is holding a trombone.  Faded with age and use on the corner is the moniker: _The Essential Glenn Miller._ Helena smiles, she’s heard him before, and she’s in the mood to dance.

Mrs. Switz laughs and moves across the room with surprising agility for an eighty-five year old woman.  She shifts some newspapers around and reveals what Helena has come to know as a _record_ _player._ Phonographs are a relic of the past these days, it seems.  “I have a record player, Helena,” Mrs. Switz explains.  “No one’s called them phonographs in ages.”

They put the record on and soon the opening strings of what Helena can only describe as a dancing song comes on.  “This is aces,” Helena laughs as Mrs. Switz grabs her hand and pulls her into a dance that Helena doesn’t know.  They kick their feet forward as the trumpets kick in and laugh as one as the full band kicks in. 

Mrs. Switz’ fingers feel worn against her finger and Helena spins her with a grin that she can’t quite suppress.  “What is that instrument?” she asks as a soloist takes over the melody.  She’s still learning about jazz and how it works. 

“Why, it’s a saxophone,” Mrs. Switz says as they spin again.  Her wizened face draws inwards, thoughtful and full of joy as she listens to Mr. Miller and his band.  “I think an alto, but it could be a tenor.”

Helena has never heard a saxophone used in such a way.  They were considered too strong for most of the music that she’d enjoyed as a child, a poor man’s oboe or clarinet.  They were underutilized in even the most common and low class of musical ensembles in her day.  She basks in the solo, pulling Mrs. Switz in close and swaying as the music kicks up once again. 

“This is brilliant,” She murmurs.  

This dance between them is short and sweet.  Mrs. Switz is elderly with a cane and Helena does not want to injure her.  They laugh after the song is over and Mrs. Switz kisses her cheek with chapped lips.  They’re just two people of a similar time; they remember some of the same things about the same sorts of people.  Mrs. Switz was just a child when Helena’s contemporaries were grandparents, but they all remembered the rise of this age. 

And the music, oh yes the music.

“You’re a child of a different age, Helena,” Mrs. Switz comments as the record winds down.

Helena supposes that she is.

/|\

Her road trip draws her south and away from the coast, pausing for the briefest of moments in Morgantown, West Virginia.  There’s a college here, and the students wear blue and gold.  They sing after victories in their sporting events. 

Helena sits at a bar just off the main drag, watching the television over the bar as the team that hails from this university town struggles mightily against an apparently inferior opponent.  The bar is clogged with old men who appear shocked that their team is so successful, and young men wearing fraternity letters and charming good looks.  Helena feels out of place in her plain white shirt and jeans, but she sips the local beer that the barkeep has given her and watches the game.

Americans, she thinks, have a strange definition of what is sport.  She’s seen American football played before, when she went to Chicago for the World’s Fair and saw the University of Chicago play the University of Illinois.  The game is faster now, different.  Negroes are allowed to play, and, as she has long suspected, they are quite good at the sport.

“That’s our Geno,” the young fraternity brother next to Helena gleefully says. He’s thrown the ball damn near down the field before it’s caught and run into the end zone.  Helena is impressed by his ability to throw the ball that far, but even more so with how the people are rallying around this young man who does not look like them.

She supposes that of all the things that she missed while she was trapped in the bronze, the brotherhood between black men and white men is the most surprising.  She knows that it isn’t perfect, she knows it’s far from it – but it’s better than it was in her day, and she’s proud that they’ve come this far.

As the clock winds out, the bar erupts into song. 

“Almost heaven, West Virginia,” the crowd says as one.  Helena blinks, she’s never heard this song.  In background, over the quiet murmur of voices, there’s a guitar playing.  The cords strike true, gentle and airy.  They speak of this place.  “Blue ridge mountains, Shenandoah River…”

She finds the song on her music player later, when she’s back on the road and headed further west.  “Country roads,” she murmurs, thinking of another set of country roads that lead her back to a place where she feels like she really could have belonged.

She shakes her head and shifts the car easily into fifth. She can never go back there, it is her duty to protect the astrolabe, to keep moving until she dies.  The astrolabe can never be found.  The evil that had taken over Arthur would be hunting her like a dog until it breathed its last breath, and she could not risk herself (or anyone else).

Helena finds herself singing along to the song, the words come easily the second time through.  She thinks about Myka, and about what it might have truly meant to die for the woman she’s come to love so dearly.  She cannot fathom it, she isn’t that noble.

White knuckles grip the steering wheel as she thinks of Myka’s face upon her death.  She cannot fathom it.  She does not want to even think of never seeing Myka again.

(She dreams of her own death every night. She wakes up with her head splitting with the pain of it as the wires touch and the bomb goes off.  She sits in her bed then, staring at the disposable cell phone she keeps with her at all times in her hands.  She wants to call Myka.  She needs to call Myka.  She has to tell her that she’s okay.

Helena lets the phone fall to the bed, still switched off as it is.  She can’t call Myka and she knows it. )

The road stretches on, taking her further and further from the places where she belongs.

John Denver plays quietly in the background, and Helena speeds towards destiny.

/|\

Her trip is meandering and snakes across the interior of this country that she's only just barely coming to know.  She can't help but feel out of place as she finds a place to pause for the night, not long after she's driven out of West Virginia.  The map that she's got spread out across the passenger seat is nigh incomprehensible and all she knows is confusion at the narrow roads cut into sedimentary cliffs.  There are rolling hills here, and as Helena drives through the countryside she sees far more farms than she ever thought she'd see in such a post-modern society.

The farms are lined with wooden fences that seem to add into the ascetic of the place.  Horses graze idly and Helena keeps her eyes on the road as she drives on. 

She's already had to leave New York and West Virginia.  There have been too many close calls, near sightings and artifacts at every turn.  There are so many now, and the powers that they possess are beyond Helena's comprehension at times. 

She wonders if she’s just gotten better at recognizing the signs.

Helena wants to say that she's not running, but she truly is.  She's running from her nightmares.  The visions of her own death have never ceased and she feels two layers of time pressing down on her consciousness even now.  The damned astrolabe that has caused all this sits between two neatly folded jumpers that she's picked up as she moves across the American landscape. 

She pauses in a college town in Kentucky and finds herself sitting at the back of a coffee shop that could also be a bookstore.  She likes the atmosphere here, and for what feels like the first time in one-hundred years, she finds herself writing across napkins. 

The words flow from her, and when the barista behind the counter slips out with a pot of coffee to refill Helena's mug, she's asked if she's writing the next big thing.

Helena smiles up at the girl, who looks so impossibly young.  Blonde with an attractive twang.  She has a tattoo that dips down below her shirt collar and seems quite at peace with her identity.  In some ways, Helena envies her, for she had never been free to truly be herself in her youth.

There's a room for rent advertised on the cork board at the front of the store, the notice tucked behind a picture of lost cat and knitting circle flyer.  Helena pulls it off the board as she's leaving and sits in her car for long time, staring down it in her hands.

She hadn't wanted to stop, but she likes it here.  She's maybe inspired.

(She can take her mind off Myka here, if she chooses to believe in false miracles.)

But the horses here remind her of her childhood in the countryside, playing with Charles before they both grew up enough to realize that they were not the same.  Before Charles got himself a valet and gambling debts, before Helena had taught herself to write what was in her head and not was simply around her. 

Before their innocence was lost.

She finds the address advertised on the flyer, and drives slowly around the block, staring up at the old house with its wide front porch and that same white fencing that she sees everywhere here.  She doesn't know if it's considered improper to simply go up to the door and inquire, but she has no other option, as night is growing and she has Kosan's blood money burning a hole in her pocket.

There's a mason jar full of freshly cut flowers on the porch, and a forgotten teacup.  Helena can hear a record playing softly deep inside the house and she smiles.  This is her sort of music, the sort that ebbs into you and settles before it ramps up once again. 

Helena knocks on the screen door and smiles politely as a wizened and frail-looking old man slowly moves his way towards the door.  She can see that there's sharpness about his eyes, and when he speaks his voice is strong and full of the inflection of this place. It sounds almost familiar to Helena, the vowels rolling almost like they do at home, but with a twang that is truly unique to this region.  "Are you here about the room?" he asks.

She nods, "My name is Helena.  I saw it posted and I thought I'd come and have a look."  She gives a little shrug, because she never thought it'd be awkward to introduce herself to a potential landlord. 

"Sam Mackoff. The place is gettin' too big for just me," the man explains, and offers her his hand.  It is worn and oh so dark against her own skin.  She shakes it strongly, purposefully, and lets him lead her inside. 

There's an old record player sitting atop a table to itself, and a record set to play.  Helena watches as Mr. Mackoff takes the record's needle off the record and sets it aside.  He shuts off the power and perches himself on an arm of the sofa with a bright smile.  "So tell me about yourself, Helena.  Do you go to school?"

"No sir," she says with a wry smile.  She's never given much thought to continuing her education.  "Just passing through and it felt like a good place for lingering."

"That's a mighty odd way to put it," Mr. Mackoff laughs.  His eyes are twinkling under truly impressive eyebrows, and Helena finds herself grinning back at him.  Smiling hurts and she winces, maybe she’s not yet used to being happy. "But I like it.  Rent's 250 a month, you can pay me when you move your things in."

There's an easy sense of peace that comes over Helena as she nods her agreement.  "I'll just go an ah... get them," she gestures towards her car and Mr. Mackoff throws his head back and laughs.  His hair is flying every which way as he clutches at his stomach. 

"You come prepared," he says.  "And confident.  Good for you."

She smiles at him, and ducks out of the door.

When she comes downstairs some time later, he's put the record back on, and is holding a picture frame in his hands.  There's a woman there, beautiful and in a wedding dress.  A woman long-gone, if Helena's powers of observation at all to be trusted.

"This is a lovely song," she says, not daring to touch his shoulder.

"I played it for her," Mr. Mackoff laughs.  His eyes have crow's feet surrounding them, but his entire body is full of expressions of love.  "Way back when - I played it for her and told her that I loved her."

"Did she believe you?" Helena asks mildly.

Sam Mackoff grins brightly up at her; all crooked teeth and wizened old man.  He's perfect and Helena is grateful he is good and kind and doesn't ask that many questions.  "She was just mad I didn't use Elvis - loved that man, Milly did."

Helena has no idea who the Elvis he's talking about is, but nods her head and picks up the record.  The band is called The Clovers, and the song whose aged record plays staccato repeat over and over through the house is stunning.  She can't help but think of Myka in these moments, and hums along, 'Oh Baby, don't you know I love you?'

/|\

Mr. Mackoff apparently has taken great offense to the fact that Helena has next to no knowledge of his beloved Milly's favorite singer.  Helena has let him believe what he wants about her lack of musical education, but when he sits her down and explains the origins of groups like his Clovers and how their music was taken over by other men - white men, Mr. Mackoff clarifies - and turned into something almost unrecognizable over time. 

"Milly use'ta tell me that it wasn't about that," Mr. Mackoff explains as they sit next to each other on a park bench, the heel of a loaf of bread between them in the empty bag it came in earlier that week.  They're doing something so incredibly mundane that Helena almost thinks that there's got to be some sort of catch to it.

Her life has never been simple or moved at the unhurried pace that Sam Mackoff tends to favor.  She feels as though she's been running her entire life, and never paused to catch her breath. 

This place is merely a stop-over, but she's found herself full of a second sort of sadness overlaying the sadness she feels like a dull ache just below her skin.  She has found herself treasuring the time she has been given here, whispering confessions to the wind and the horses that sometimes come to Mr. Mackoff's fence with curious eyes and constantly moving ears. 

She can't tell him, because she wants him to know very little about who she is when she does leave, and the guilt of the lie grows inside her with each passing day.  She has to keep him safe from whatever it is that Arthur is planning.  All the signs point to something positively dire, and Helena's spent more than a few sleepless nights scribbling lists into the leather-bound notebook she's purchased for just such thoughts.  She cannot let Mr. Mackoff, or anyone who has shown her kindness on this journey, fall victim to what she runs from.

The lists number into the hundreds.  Artifacts that she knows could cause the large-scale destruction that the legends surrounding the astrolabe put forth. She tries not to think of how she knows them, for the source of all is the darkness within her own heart. Her own desperation set forth to be her downfall.

As she throws bits of bread to the geese and pigeons that have gathered before them, Helena thinks of what she would have done with the astrolabe, had she had the chance to use it.

The idea to her is horrifying, the cost is staggeringly high.  Her mind dwells still on the trident that she desperately wanted to use - the reason why the warehouse as an entity came into existence in the first place. How is it different, to use a device to save, rather than to harm?  Are they not the same action?  Would she have done the same?

Her mind turns inward, towards the fire and the pain in her dreams.  Had Myka died, Helena knows, she would have followed Arthur’s path without question. Her pain and her grief had overwhelmed her once, twice, she was sure that she would lose what precious little control she had again. 

But maybe that was the point.  Because without pain what is living?

Mr. Mackoff's jazz music seems to indicate a similar sentiment.  All the best jazz comes from pain, he had explained one evening over tea.  The warm kind, for Helena cannot stomach how the people here take it cold and sweet with no milk. It is only with pain that you are able to create something beautiful.

It explains how she's been able to write so easily these days.

"You're stuck in your head," Mr. Mackoff comments.  He uses a walking stick to get around on longer walks, and he prods her foot with it now.  "What's bothering you?"

"Just thinking," Helena muses, tossing a particularly fat pigeon the last of her bread crust.  "Why is it that things change?"

Mr. Mackoff sucks on his teeth, and then shakes his head.  "Because if things don't change, they'll stay the same until they fall apart," he explains.  He holds his hands out before him, and Helena stares at the arthritic knuckles and crooked fingers.  "I got my fingers broke, but others had it much worse."

The better world that Helena had always imagined for Christina and Christina's children had not yet come to pass.  The future was a horrible place. 

Later, Mr. Mackoff finds one of Milly’s old Elvis Pressley records and they dance in his living room. The music is very different from anything that Helena’s really heard before, the guitar sounds metallic, canned even, and the man’s voice is definitely intriguing. 

The music player that Claudia had given her has a few songs by him in a list entitled ‘Oldies’ and Helena listens to them late into the night, humming about Blue Suede Shoes and her toes to herself as she awaits the dawn once more. 

Sleep is elusive to her now, and she must be ever vigilant.

/|\

She has to leave Kentucky when she hears of a horse with a brass shoe that cannot lose a race.  The shoe allegedly had once belonged a horse named Secretariat, and when Mr. Mackoff tells her that he’s thinking about betting a considerable amount of his remaining savings on a race, she simply has to do something. The horseshoe is an artifact, and in the bag that Mr. Kosan had left her with, there are a handful of static bags. 

Helena does not want to carry around a veritable arsenal of artifacts in the trunk of her car. She knows full-well that they are not stable when together, even if neutralized in static bags.  She knows that the astrolabe is a burden enough, and it is in the moment that Mr. Mackoff suggests he throw away his life savings on a horserace that Helena throws in the towel.

Under the cover of darkness, she steals inside the stables just outside the city and finds the horse’s stall.  There are police patrolling the area and Helena does have a badge if she’s caught, but she’d rather avoid it all together.  She does not know if Arthur, or anyone at the Warehouse for that matter, is watching this area. 

The stables are quiet, full of the tired sounds of horses at rest.  The swish of tails and occasional stomp of a foot echo around her as she steals through the rows of stalls, dressed all in black.  She’s got no idea if the horse is actually wearing the shoe, which would prove immensely complicated as she is not a farrier. She does not want to somehow irreparably damage the poor horse if she's got to remove it, so she makes up her mind to assess the situation before she acts. 

Lady luck is on her side, and the tools had been laid out for the farrier, but the horse was still without the fresh shoes that it was to wear for the upcoming race.  Large dark eyes stare at Helena as she moves slowly towards the door, static bag in one hand and a handkerchief in the other.  She doesn't have any gloves to protect her hands, and it is back to how it had been before this whole mess had started and she was back in the time where she truly belongs.

She picks up the shoe with her kerchief-covered hand carefully and backs away slowly, making sure that she is out of the stall before she drops the horse shoe into its new home in the waiting static bag.  As sparks fly up and across her face, the horse's nose and ears are illuminated, pressed back in fear as it pulls at its lead.

The magic of any artifact is only as powerful as the belief in it, she thought darkly, but the fear is still very real.

They all fear the unknown.

Mr. Mackoff doesn't understand why she has to leave, but sees her off with a smile and a kiss on her cheek.  He's furnished her with cassette tapes that she can't play in her car, but Helena doesn't have the heart to tell him so. She holds his hand longer for what is necessary, and thanks him again and again for his kindness.

It truly is more than she deserves.

She drives south and then west, cutting through the Smoky Mountains and into Tennessee proper. There are strange structures along the highway, and near-constant signs of falling rocks in the road, and Helena pauses to inspect a structure of a dragon more closely before hurrying on her way. Claudia's music player eats into the journey, and Helena makes a decision as she passes through the mountains. 

She cannot have another artifact near the astrolabe.  It is not safe and it's already spitting sparks in the back seat even though she's barely been driving two and a half hours.  She bites her lip, and prepares to break a promise she never thought she'd have to break.

In Knoxville, she stops at a bookstore and purchases a battered copy of _The Time Machine_. The cover is half falling off, and someone has added horns and a tail to the portrait of Charles that is printed on the back.

Helena feels a momentary surge of anger, staring down at Charles' youthful face.  While she misses him, and sometimes longs for the chance to once again share his company, she cannot stomach how he's so easily stolen her name and greatest achievements.  She wants to add to the graffiti on the book, an opus on why Charles was a pig and a waste of space. 

She wants to do a lot of things.

Her eye twitches slightly as she pays for the book, and her voice shakes as she asks the clerk if she can borrower a pen.  When he informs her that she cannot leave the store, she shakes her head.  She had never intended to do so, and snatches it out of his hand and settles onto the battered couch that's jammed in between the stacks at the back of the store.

It smells of many things here, but not the smell that Helena longs for.  There is no sunshine here, surrounded by books, no light and certainly no apples.  There is only the old and musty smell of books that she's always loved, cut by the scent of coffee that floats across her nose and makes her crave it despite its intolerable taste.

Her fingers turn the pages with practice, examining the printing. She's looking for a specific passage, one she knows Myka knows well. They've talked about why Helena wrote the book, for hours and hours into even longer nights of presumed silence.  Myka, who Helena longs to forget. Myka, who is unforgettable.

She circles the passage three times, and places the bookmark that was given to her with her purchase at the beginning of the book.  She won't make this easy.

"Strength is the outcome of need," she mutters to herself, and tucks the book into a box along with the static bag.  They are carefully addressed to go to Myka at the bed and breakfast - no one else.  “And I have none, it seems.”

She's sure that Myka will understand.

She puts the box into a frazzled-looking postal worker's hands, and leaves without a word.  She thinks that she'll continue west; maybe see the Graceland that Milly Mackoff was so in love with.  Her journey has no real destination, just half-written postcards to Myka, crumpled up and tossed into the passenger seat, where she doesn’t have to look at her failure to articulate her heart.

She’s learned that if she shakes the music player, it will play a song at random, and she’s never bothered to look much past the list of songs under the ‘oldies’ playlist.  Helena has found the other music on the payer to be just noise; she thinks she has to grow into it.

Helena moves the gearshift into reverse, and then back into first gear, she’s heading up the highway and the music is playing low and quiet in the background.

She’s nearly half-way there when Claudia's little yellow music player truly sends her on her way. The chorus goes says her destination, over and over again.

Graceland, Graceland.  Memphis, Tennessee.

/|\

She dreams of Myka.

The dreams are of a moment frozen in sadness, a single tear trailing slowly down Myka's soot-stained face.  There is fire everywhere, and a void in her heart that not even Christina's memory can fill. Perhaps the void is the death she longs for in these dreams, an unspoken longing for something she  cannot ever have again. In her dreams, she is catapulting herself into a better place where the mere act of living doesn't steal her breath away.

She wakes in cold sweats with the sheets twisted around her, fingers half-closed around the pistol under her pillow.  The room smells sterile and impersonal.  She's been here for days, tormented by her dreams, in a hotel room rented under an assumed alias.

Oh, how she longs to be herself again, to reclaim her name and her former glory.

Graceland had not been quite what she had thought it to be.  It was full of information on the evolution of American music, Helena could give it that.  It stood a shrine to Milly Mackoff's Elvis, but there was no soul about the place.  The music, she had realized while standing at the gate, had left it.

It is close to Christmas when she finally arrives in Memphis - a city with a name that seems out of place in the middle of America.  To Helena, Memphis is in Egypt, another city on a river.  Her people no longer hold Egypt, and every day, the paper holds more tales of elections and nationalistic revolt.  It all seems so familiar, if displaced.

She had left her world on the eve of such events in Europe and the hollow echo of all that have died in the name of nationalist fervor haunt her with every passing moment.

She wonders if she should go to France, to see the place where Wholly died.  She owes him that much, but doesn't trust her passport to leave the country.  Mr. Kosan hadn't advised against it, but the threat of discovery, was, as always, very real.  Maybe she is being paranoid, but she knows what is hidden there, and she wants to stay well away from such a place.

When she finally arrives in Memphis, she's exhausted. Helena has stopped in every city along the way, investigating the feel of the place, desperately trying to avoid the sense of doom that seems to follow her every step.  The students here dress in blue as well, but they accent it with grey.  She goes to see them play a game she's heard of but never actually seen executed, and finds herself looking up the rules later.

The students roar and cheer for their tigers and howl as the other team, the clearly better team, puts the ball through the net again and again.  It is a strange experience - one that she's not at all sure she likes. Her ears are ringing as she lets the people around her begin to stream out in royal blue rivers towards the exits, the game still in progress. 

She waits until the buzzer has marked the end before she, too, turns to the exits. She leaves feeling bewildered and finds her way to a library with books that do little to answer her questions.  Her fingers trail along the spines and she starts.

Here is a book she recognizes.

Here is a book she wrote.

She never thought her books would end up in university libraries. She never dared to have such hubris.

Once, with her eyes heavy with soon-to-come sleep, Myka had told Helena that there were whole classes at the university she'd attended dedicated to her work.  "Your words are revered, you were – are” she had stressed, “a visionary." She'd explained this, curling contentedly into her pillow as Helena had stared openly at her.

It is the innocence that clings to Myka in that moment that had drawn Helena in, fingers resting in soft curls, twirling them around her fingers.  She marvels at how they bounce as she settles in for sleep beside this woman she’s still growing to understand.  It is just one tentative step forward, and she holds her breath as Myka throws an arm over her and hums contentedly into her neck. 

She does not deserve this love.

Many weeks later, Myka confesses that she'd taken every class.

There is a love for Myka in her that Helena cannot articulate.

Helena feels like she is alone in this world, for Myka is a thousand miles away.  She sits alone in the middle of a city full of people and feels like she’s suffocating.  The silence that presses down upon her ears is a cacophony of noise – sheer sound that she feels as if she has not heard in years. 

It is in her dreams that she thinks of Myka most of all; and it is with every waking moment that she finds herself wishing to forget.  Her mission is simple, never go back there, no matter what.  The evil that they have created will never rest until it is reunited with her precious cargo.

She sits in the middle of Memphis, staring out into a vast swell of people and does not understand why all she hears is silence. The ringing in her ears grows and she turns to see that she is alone in a sea of people who do not know her, and do not care if she lives or dies.

She has to make her own way now. 

Helena sits with her head in her hands, fingers tangling hair that it is now fashionable to keep down.  She still feels so lost in this world, so completely and utterly confused by who it is that she is supposed to be.  All she can think of is Myka in moments like this, and she feels the yearning for what she cannot have so acutely that it cuts deep within her heart.

At the university bookstore, she finds first one book, and then another which chronicle the change of the world since she has been removed from it.  She buys them both with cash that tumbles awkwardly from her hands and onto the counter.  The young man behind the counter smiles shyly at her as she rights herself and flashes a grin that is far more teeth than it is actually earned.

She doesn’t smile anymore.

There, in the index in the back of the book she’s just purchased, she finds an entry on herself – spanning mentions across three chapters.  She reads them greedily, her arm curled protectively around the book like a mother shielding her child, and her hands shake as she turns the pages. A picture of herself as Charles emerges, and Helena hesitates, her fingers trailing down the text.  She reads words that she does not quite understand, and finds her name attributed to things that she could not have ever possibly have supported.  The horrible ‘science’ of practices like eugenics – practices that her idiot brother could have been easily swayed by – is attached to her name forever in the history books.

Helena rips the pages from the book and borrows a yellow marker from the boy behind her, drawing lines across the pages.  She notes everything that is incorrect, everything that she can never reclaim as her own.  Charles has ruined her once again, it seems, and defeat presses into her from every angle. 

She saves those pages, tucks them into the breast pocket of her jacket.  They are close to her heart there, a person that she can no longer be.

Claudia’s little yellow music player hums to life as she starts her car to head back to the hotel and out of Tennessee for good.  A man’s voice sings that she should to go her own way.  The song is catching and she’s humming along by the end of the song.  She hits the button that makes the song play once more, and it starts once again.

She’s driving north and west.  Towards the one place she was supposed to avoid once and for all.

Her mouth opens as the chorus plays for the third time and she sings along as bravely as she can.  She’s never done this before, not even to Mr. Mackoff’s Elvis record.  She has never been much of a singer. 

“You can go your own way…”

/|\

Her path takes her north along the Mississippi river, cutting a jagged road back and forth northwards across the American countryside.  She is at the border now, the boundary of what had once represented America and once had been a territory of France and Spain.  The floodplain of the river is wide and the crops are fertile here.  This is the Nile of this continent, deep and wide.  She can’t cross over it and there are no wings of Icarus on this journey.

She senses the growing doom with every passing day.  The astrolabe lies dormant, wrapped in a cloth deep inside a static bag.  It is in stasis, but dread has settled in at the pit of her stomach.  Like the time before, when she sat down in her time machine time after time – counting back the minutes until her body would awaken.

The calm before the storm, the little yellow music player points out, comes first when the sun burns out.  Helena knows that this is not even remotely a possibility, but she takes the astrolabe from its static bag and holds it in her bare hands.  She’s looking for clues, as any good detective would – desperately trying to find the one thing that is out of place in such a diabolical device. 

It is as ancient as time itself, and she’s sure that the secrets of this device and its evil are locked deep within the heart of Arthur Neilson.  She’s not a fool, and she knows that he must have been warned of the danger before he used the device.  He's called her back to draw him into his delusions once again.

She's stopped at a restaurant somewhere in Indiana, heading north towards Chicago.  She's resolved to stay there for a while; it is a large enough city that she can be anonymous.  Her fingers shred the cheap paper napkin that's been left with her fork and knife into a neat pile of perfectly torn strips.  A song that feels old is playing on what Helena’s learned is called a jukebox, a jazz piece with a man’s voice singing about flying to the moon.  The sheer inanity of the song has her almost smiling, but the feeling of dread that’s been growing inside her all day does not settle no matter what tune is played.

Something does not feel right about today. 

The little yellow music player sits on the table next to her, pulled from her pocket as she scrolls through the songs that she's listened to so far.  She's been keeping track, working her way through the culture that Claudia though it correct to inflict upon her.  She's hardly made a dent, lingering on certain playlists and keywords that she's meticulously searched for using the rather complicated search function. 

"Whatcha havin', hon?" the waitress asks, sauntering up to Helena with a pleasant smile over horn-rimmed glasses.  She's got bright red lips that draw Helena's eyes down, staring at them for a moment before she gathers herself. 

She orders oats and yogurt.  She's learned that she cannot eat much of modern American cuisine without her stomach turning violently for hours afterwards.  The waitress smiles coyly as she leaves, and Helena's cheeks burn.  She'd never intended to flirt.

The ringing in her ears returns, and she glances towards the window, and the sky outside.  It's grown dark, and in this cloudless mid-winter day, that strikes her as odd.

Inky blackness spreads from a point far above the town and Helena's breath catches.  She knocks her glass of water over in her haste to stand up, her hand covering her mouth.  Claudia's music player just survives the flood, protected by a plate as she hurriedly gathers her things. 

This is far worse than she could have ever imagined.  An artifact so deeply steeped in warehouse lore than even her mentors had been convinced it was nothing more than a myth.

She throws ten dollars on the table for the food she has not eaten and the mess she has made and bolts for her car.  The radio crackles to life without the music player plugged in and Helena rummages for the disposable cellular telephone that she purchased all those weeks ago.  She's no fool, and this - this is when she's going to be needed most of all.  This is the ultimate act, and it explains why Artie was so desperate to find the dagger.

She dials the number from memory as she throws the car into reverse and then into first, speeding out of the parking lot and towards the highway once more. 

The dial tone pulses in her hear, once, twice, and finally a third time before she gets a response.  "I'm coming back," she says, and throws the phone down onto the seat next to her.  The astrolabe, she reasons can stay hidden for the time being. 

The radio announcer jokingly introduces the next song, and she does pay it much mind until the song kicks into a higher gear and the singer points out that it's the end of the world as they know it.

He does have a point.

/|\

She does not call Myka. 

Myka is on the ground, the Regents tell her.  She's in France on the front lines, attempting to decipher the puzzle that they've been presented.  There's no hope, and the very population of the world is in danger of decimation. 

Helena's stomach is a twisted knot of anxiety as she thinks about how she held this very power in her hands and moved to use it without thought to the consequences. Was she really any better than Charles and his false science at this point?  They both wanted to play god.

Mrs. Frederic is beside her, showing far more emotion than Helena can ever recall her expressing.  The worst moment of this has come when she finds the Regent's security forces loading a body into the back of an ambulance.  She's never seen a building sag with emotion as the Warehouse does now, and it adds to the fear that grows within Helena.  The Warehouse is unflappable, it's guardian a perfect picture of composure.  For all this to happen, something is desperately wrong.

She's laid out the contents of her duffle on the couch in the Bed and Breakfast's sitting room.  They have not offered to get her room, and she has not asked about it.  It is not the time for that.  Claudia's music player is set next to her pistol and keys.  The astrolabe is still in its static bag, but she holds it in two reverent hands as she waits for Mrs. Frederic to clear her to go upstairs and maybe get some sleep.

"I hadn't realized you'd kept that," Mrs. Frederic says, pointing at Claudia's music player with something akin to curiosity flickering across her distraught face.  "Ms. Donovan will be happy to see it safe."

"She's going to take over for you, when you decide it's time to die, isn't she?"  She's noticed the signs before now, and she knows that she's almost driven Claudia into that position at least once. 

Mrs. Frederic looks over her glasses at Helena, turning the gun that Mr. Kosan had insisted that she take with her over in her hands. "I would think that you'd know the signs of that better than most, Ms. Wells."  She doesn't answer, as is her way, but its more confirmation than Helena's ever going to need.  They stare at each other for several drawn-out moments, before Helena sighs and runs a tired hand through her hair. 

"I had never meant to come back here," she confesses.  Leena had once tacked a map up on the wall of this room, showing them all where their cases had taken them in the past year.  The journey was astounding, the miles that had fallen away beneath their feet mind-boggling.  She's driven all over the East Coast and Helena knows that she's barely even touched the country.  "I had a lot left I wanted to see."

"Prudence dictates that you should be here, in case your knowledge of Warehouse 12 is needed," Mrs. Frederic reaches for the astrolabe and holds it in her hands.  "It is too late to fix what this has done now."

"What hope is there then?"  Helena sinks into a chair with all the theatrics of her contemporaries.  She cradles her head in her hands and stares down at her scuffed boots.  "They'll die over there and we - we cannot let that happen!"

Helena later reasons that the problem of having two people in the same room whose lives have no spanned across three centuries is that the concept of time is somewhat lost in such situations. They've run out of time, the damage has been done and they all will die.  It is just a matter of when they will succumb to death's sweet embrace. 

"You should trust in Myka," Mrs. Frederic says quietly.  "She placed her trust in you when no one else would, Ms. Wells."

Myka who is everything.

Myka who is unforgettable.

Helena chews her lip and retreats from the room, her feet climbing up groaning stairs to a door she's never quite had the courage to open on her own.  She tries the handle, confidence filling her as she dares trespass into a private sanctuary.

"I cannot do it," Helena confesses to the empty room.  She knows what she must do, and she knows that it will not be looked kindly upon.  They can still save everyone, still fix this.  Someone has to realize that the world is not forfeit.

She's really not this noble.

She will die a thousand deaths for Myka.

Helena Wells leaves Claudia's music player in her room with a note saying thank you before she tells her plan to Mrs. Frederic.  "I am out of time already," she insists.  "We both know that my awakening was a mistake, let me undo this, and then put me back where I cannot hurt anyone."

Mrs. Frederic says nothing for a long time, before she shakes her head no.  "I have seen what the consequences of that act are, Helena.  There is another way."

"But-" she starts.

"Your suicidal tendencies would never have gotten you my job," Mrs. Frederic points out, tucking the astrolabe under her arm and gesturing towards the door.  "Now, you should go to her if that is what you so desire."

And Helena goes, because that is what her heart yearns for. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Music from this story:
> 
> Gilbert & Sullivan, Glenn Miller - Take Five, John Denver - Take Me Home, Country Roads, The Clovers - Don’t You Know I Love You?, Elvis - Blue Suede Shoes & Hound Dog, Paul Simon - Graceland, Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way, The Water Is Wide (old spiritual), Fall Out Boy - Calm Before the Storm, Frank Sinatra - Fly Me To The Moon, REM - End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine)
> 
> yes, I am aware that I didn't include The Beatles.


End file.
